Written evidence submitted by Dr Katharina Rietig and Christine Peringer, LLB (CLI0031)

Environmental diplomacy:

effective climate negotiations through digital diplomacy and facilitation

Written evidence submitted to the UK Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee

on 4.9.2020

By Dr. Katharina Rietig[1] and Christine Peringer, LLB[2]

Summary

The international attention on the UK Presidency of COP26 brings high pressure on the UK government to perform well in managing and facilitating the digital/online and in-person negotiations throughout 2020/21. There is a high reputational risk for the UK in poorly managing the negotiations similar to the 2009 COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen, which are widely regarded as a failure due to poor negotiation facilitation and management by the Danish Presidency.

Succeeding in effectively facilitating the COP26 negotiations and increasing countries' climate policy ambition in line with the Paris Agreement will benefit the UK directly through improving the reputation of the UK as leading diplomatic power following negative international perceptions throughout the Brexit negotiations.

What role should the FCO have in preparing and setting objectives for COP26? How well is it performing to date?

The FCO is at the centre of preparing and setting objectives for COP26 given its experience of participating in and organising major international negotiations/ conferences. It has a co-ordinating role to link the other key actors that are part of the UK Presidency, including subject/ technical experts from BEIS on climate change and experienced climate change negotiators with external key actors such as the UNFCCC secretariat, the Italian Presidency, UNFCCC parties, academic experts and non-national stakeholders. These functions have been consolidated at the Cabinet Office, which gives the UK Presidency team the necessary visibility and coherence.

The FCO has the primary responsibility to consider the ‘how’ of the negotiations, i.e. managing the preparatory phase and the UNFCCC COP26 summit itself. It is the role of the FCO to address together with relevant stakeholders the following challenges:

1. Postponement of COP26 due to Covid-19 requires digital diplomacy

The cancellation of the UNFCCC June 2020 conference in Bonn (SB/ SBSTA/ SBI) and the postponement of COP26 by one year to November 2021 were necessary in reaction to Covid-19 and the related travel restrictions. However, it also brings unprecedented challenges to host effective, time-sensitive negotiations by developing digital diplomacy and blended approaches, i.e. combining digital with in-person diplomacy to maintain and increase the momentum towards delivering on the objectives of

a) Finalizing the Paris Rulebook,

b) Increasing ambition in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and

c) Moving towards the implementation and monitoring phase of the Paris Agreement with stronger inclusion of civil society, cities, businesses and experts.[3]

The central problem is that the physical distancing required to safeguard health during the Covid-19 pandemic negatively impacts the UK’s ability to host high-level international negotiations crucial and time-critical to advance global climate action. The UNFCCC started experimenting in smaller negotiation sessions on sub-committees with the use of online/ video-conferencing software to continue technical work and maintain momentum.

This new form of ‘digital diplomacy’ in consequence of and to avoid further waves of Covid-19, (including overwhelming healthcare systems in least developed and developing countries as negotiators return to their home countries), offers numerous challenges and benefits.

Benefits of digital diplomacy include

a)      Reduced carbon emissions and costs from travelling to and attending conferences,

b)     It may increase inclusiveness and transparency by allowing more negotiators and observers from small developing/least developed countries, including the interested public, to attend who would not have the financial resources or visa access otherwise,

c)      Digital diplomacy is also more time-efficient due to saved travel time and may have health benefits in terms of reduced exposure to Covid-19, other viruses/bacteria and jet lag.

Challenges and potential limitations of digital diplomacy include

a)      The lack of in-person trust building, informal conversations between negotiation parties to find ‘common landing zones’ for agreement and potential for misunderstandings and misjudging situations due to the chair’s/other negotiator’s inability to recognise signalling through body language (Kurtzberg et al. 2009).

b)     Inclusiveness can be impeded as some participants require simultaneous translation or have no access to stable internet connections with sufficient bandwidth.

c)      Frequently, deals are struck after nights of negotiations when the presidency and group pressure make clear to negotiators that they will not be able to leave until an agreement is found, with the ability of negotiators to spontaneously approach each other to explore compromise options crucial to progress (Smeets 2015).

2. Institutional memory of previous successes and failures in UNFCCC negotiations

The personnel turnover within the FCO and the UK civil service (BEIS) is relatively high with a large number of relatively inexperienced civil servants in central positions (defined as less than 3-5 years working experience with either international negotiations and/or climate negotiations). Many finished their Masters degrees relatively recently (within the last 3-5 years). This offers the opportunity of fresh and unbiased thinking and a willingness to embrace emerging opportunities as well as experiment with different approaches.

This relatively young team needs however to be balanced with close mentoring and regular consultation of international experts, especially those who have been involved in participating/ negotiating and organizing UNFCCC conferences before. This allows the FCO to learn from previous successes and failures as well as to better understand the dynamics between developed and developing countries. The ‘Friends of the COP26’ and various networks with non-national actors in the ‘all of society’ approach set by the UK Presidency in early 2020 offers a strong basis for achieving this. However, the interactions should move beyond ad-hoc consultations towards closer mentoring and a broader inclusion of relevant experts.

What lessons can be learnt from the experience of previous COP hosts, particularly the French experience preparing for COP 21?

Hosting a Conference of the Parties with 20,000-30,000 participants is a major undertaking that requires logistical and diplomatic expertise. There is large scope for lesson drawing from previous hosts, especially the Danish Presidency 2009, the French Presidency 2015 and the Fiji Presidency/ German host 2017.

COP15 in Copenhagen was considered a failure for several reasons:

1. Expectations. The level of ambition of negotiating a post-Kyoto agreement with legally binding emission reductions for developing countries was unrealistically high. This high ‘benchmark’ for success made any outcome fall short, although the Copenhagen Accords were the first step towards the bottom-up ‘pledge and review’ process of the Paris Agreement and allowed developing (non-Annex 1) countries to voluntarily develop climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

2. Closed-door negotiations. There was a perceived lack of legitimacy and transparency among the delegates, especially of the developing countries outside the small circle of Heads of States that negotiated the Copenhagen Accords behind closed doors. This led to distrust in the process and the subsequent outcome.

3. Logistics. COP15 was considered a ‘logistical nightmare’ that left thousands of delegates, regardless of seniority/ status, wait for hours outside the conference centre in the cold as they tried to register for the conference. This was caused by an unprecedented high interest in the negotiations, including by civil society, and in particular the leniency of the UNFCCC secretariat to allow large delegations and for late replacements of delegates. As a result, the UNFCCC has a quota-system in place that on average grants civil society delegations 50% of the required badges so that all members of the delegation can attend the 2-week conference for one week.

4. Leadership. The high expectations for the COP15 outcome and global public pressure resulted in an unprecedentedly high participation of Heads of Government, which necessitated the negotiations to be led by the Danish Prime Minister with little experience in such highly complex multilateral negotiations.

The Road to Paris

Many of these problems associated with COP15 were addressed and improved in the run-up to Paris. The aftermath of COP15 saw a period of reflection and new leadership with the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. She stood out as very strong and charismatic policy entrepreneur who succeeded in fostering common purpose and thinking outside the box in terms of negotiation approaches. The time between 2010 and 2015 saw a stronger inclusion of non-national actors through new forms of engaging via e.g. workshops and expert presentations. Furthermore, the interpretation of the UNFCCC draft Rules of Procedure as granting every of the over 190 countries a de-facto veto right was increasingly interpreted more loosely by the Mexican Presidency in Cancun (now the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa) as Bolivia formally objected and also by the Qatari Presidency in Doha 2012.

There were emerging ‘multilevel reinforcing governance dynamics’, i.e. linkages between the global ambitions of a post-Kyoto agreement and increasing domestic legislation on climate change also by developing countries that were exempt from climate action under the logic of the Kyoto Protocol and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (Rietig, 2014; Rietig 2019). This increased the willingness among countries to agree to more ambitious climate action on the global level, ultimately in the form of the Paris Agreement. There is now a changed mindset and expectation that developing countries do contribute to the global effort through their voluntary Nationally Determined Contributions, some of which are more ambitious than those by developed countries. The Lima-Paris Action Agenda was the key link that paved the way for a successful outcome in Paris. Under the strong leadership of the Peruvian Presidency it allowed an inclusive approach towards developing countries. It achieved a mind-shift towards the benefits of domestic climate action with the increasingly central inclusion of non-national actors such as cities, regional governments, businesses and civil society organisations central to support the implementation of any voluntary Nationally Determined Contributions towards emission reductions.

A key success factor for the Paris Agreement was the move towards consensus-based decision-making that is focused on constructive proposals and results (e.g. Indabas at COP17 in Durban/ South Africa and in Paris) and a common landing zone to maximise both effectiveness and transparency. The focus shifted away from the entrenched formal negotiation positions with insufficient overlaps in negotiation margins and a ‘win-lose’ mindset (established since the 1990s of economic prosperity versus climate action) towards a more positive framing of ‘win-win’ perspectives combining climate action with green growth and economic prosperity (Rietig, 2014). The Indabas were focused on constructive, positive contributions and finding solutions that would advance the negotiations and facilitate finding an agreement.

Post Paris: Focus on Implementation and Non-National Actor inclusion

Post-Paris, the leadership team within the UNFCCC secretariat changed with a new Executive Secretary. The focus shifted towards ratification and making the Paris Agreement operational in terms of implementation into international law, additional negotiations on specific topics, measurement, reporting and verification mechanisms and stepping up ambition in the run-up to the 5-yearly review cycles. The Paris Agreement’s focus on a ‘Pledge and Review’ approach asked countries to present and step up their Nationally Determined Contributions.

Especially COP22 in Marrakesh and COP23 in Bonn saw an increased inclusion of non-national actors and a shift from a focus on the ‘formal negotiations’ towards non-negotiation settings in the ‘Green’ or ‘Bonn’ Zone, a conference space hosting presentations, panel discussions and roundtables led by or with the participation of non-national actors. The stronger involvement of non-national actors was an important formal recognition that these are crucial for implementation due to their capacity in terms of e.g. know-how/ technical capabilities, financial resources from private sector and low carbon policies by cities etc. However, they have still no actual role in formal negotiations as the UNFCCC negotiations remain a party-driven process.

Therefore, the key lessons from Paris and subsequent hosts are:

-          Offer a non-negotiation space that is as closely integrated with the conference centre where the formal UNFCCC negotiations are hosted and allow for intermingling/ interaction between negotiators and non-state actors. If this is not the case, two separate ‘worlds’ emerge where the energy, solutions and enthusiasm of tackling the climate crisis sides with the civil society space.

-          Continue with highly transparent and inclusive process that is open to civil society/ non-national actors, experts and negotiators alike.

-          Ensure a high level of Chair training in a broad range of facilitation and mediation techniques in the formal negotiations (and pairing/ mentoring through experienced Chairs) and a process that is solution-oriented and outcome-focused (e.g. Indabas)

-          Manage the expectations to a realistic level. The key lesson from Copenhagen is to avoid unrealistically high ambition for the negotiation outcome. Instead, focus on countries’ visions and the resources required to achieve them, continuing with the spirit of ‘positive group pressure’ (Rietig, 2014) by highlighting leadership and achievements by countries and celebrating success

What does the FCO need to do to ensure that COP 26 is a success?

Physical distancing and de-globalisation responses to Covid-19 question the future of intergovernmental climate negotiations at a historical ‘make it-or-break it’ point when countries need to continue implementing the Paris Agreement by setting up and revising roadmaps to decarbonise their economies (Averchenkova and Zenghelis 2018; Rietig 2020).

This requires

1. Co-ordinated exchanges of expertise and lessons learned,
2. Capacity building,
3. Public pressure through media attention and
4. Provision of financial and technological capabilities via international burden-sharing mechanisms (Rietig 2019).

There is a high risk that Covid-19 leads to another lost decade on climate change similar to the 2007/08 financial crisis despite the intentions to ‘build back better’ from the crisis. This means that the international community would miss the last chance to keep global temperature increases below 2°C resulting in ‘run-away’ and irreversible climate change (IPCC 2018).

The FCO needs to improve the effectiveness of negotiations on addressing climate change and implementing the Paris Agreement. This is crucial as progress towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement and limiting global temperature increases to 1.5-2°C via Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by countries emerges as insufficient.

Consequently, countries need to increase their ambition in line with the Paris Agreement, which can be facilitated via conducive framework conditions of formal and informal negotiation settings.

Facilitation and mediation are crucial means to overcome disagreements among countries that result in slow or a lack of progress in formal and informal negotiations within the UNFCCC. The negotiation process can be managed more effectively via facilitation and mediation to increase countries’ willingness to commit to and implement more ambitious climate and low carbon development policies.

There is a mismatch between how the UNFCCC interprets consensus and how it is understood in the facilitation and mediation literature, including best practice in (inter)national negotiations. The Presidency and the UNFCCC Secretariat have already broad scope and leeway to apply and interpret the (draft) Rules of Procedure:

• The unanimity approach has been softened since 2011,
• Proposal of draft text based on discussions in Informals,
• Effectiveness of negotiations are often dependent on (random) individual factors such as capabilities and experience of chairs/ rapporteurs/ presidencies, their standing with/ level of trust by parties.

There are a number of facilitation and mediation approaches the FCO/ UK Presidency could use to make the UNFCCC negotiations more effective based on previous precedents and in line with Common but Differentiated Responsibilities:

1. Use a common definition of consensus that consensus does not mean unanimity
   Chairs could use the consensus principle of “standing aside” meaning the Party can live with the majority view, even if is it is not their preferred decision. Currently, consensus is often interpreted as requiring unanimity. Consensus and unanimity are not this same. This interpretation would prevent opposition on matters of lower significance and broad support from stalling negotiations.

2. Regular brief reminders of the urgency of the negotiations

Develop a way to have the urgency of the situation represented, for example by posting on the screen the trajectory of rising emissions at the beginning of committee sessions, playing short videos of demonstrations by Fridays for Future and the Climate Action Network or devastating climate change impacts in the form of natural disasters, highlight positive achievements by cities/ regional governments/ countries, reminders by the Chair how emissions have increased over the previous decades (we are currently at 0.8-1.2°C warming, IPCC 2018) or to represent the voice of the world and the impact of climate change from outside the negotiations in the committee room (facilitation technique to have an empty chair for a voice not represented in the room).

3. Use more effective processes drawn from mediation/facilitation

Use techniques developed in the field of facilitation to make the best use of negotiation time, improve outcomes and satisfaction with the process. 
Facilitation techniques can help use Party input to sort the easily resolved from the more difficult issues e.g.  “Bricks and Bullets” helped negotiators work through obstacles to agreement in the development of the Minamata Convention on Mercury (Templeton and Kohler, 2014). Other facilitation techniques, like early focus on the use of “straw polls”, indabas, and time-limited facilitated small groups to work on specific tasks could improve the speed and quality of decision-making.

4. Strengthen the role of the chairs

Chairs could assist negotiators to build toward a consensus position, not just rely on states to arrive at a consensus:

• Summarise where things stand on a point – more summary of options on the table, identification where the agreement is and what pieces are not resolved and what the positions are
• Use integrating questions to reduce “us-them” positioning e.g., ask minority position-holders “What about the others’ position is important, works for you? What would have to be changed to make this proposal work for your country?”; and ask majority position-holders “What about the others’ position is important? Works for you? What would have to be changed to make this proposal work for your country?”

5. Use experts more to identify and develop options – even within a session or overnight.

Invite internationally leading experts on agenda topics to attend the sessions and allow them to make interventions to provide clarifications/ answer questions from the floor when it is clear that there is a lack of expertise on certain highly technical issues

Which countries should the FCO be prioritising for their diplomatic efforts in relation to COP 26? How should the FCO be engaging with these countries?

The overarching principle should be a focus on an inclusive and transparent process to ensure the highest possible level of legitimacy and accountability. This is crucial to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2009, when the Danish Presidency focused on engaging with the key emitters/ major economies at the expense of the smaller and poorer developing countries.

Therefore, the recommendation is not to solely focus on the key greenhouse gas emitters and emerging economies such as the United States, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Russia and the EU countries. Instead, the focus should be on a broad and diverse coalition of developed and developing countries who have established themselves as leading in climate action. As governments change, countries’ ambitions can also increase or decrease, which makes working with and through non-state actors such as cities and business coalitions an important fall-back option until the next national government with higher climate action ambitions comes into power.

The key to success is to demonstrate to any country reluctant to embrace transitioning to a zero/low carbon economy by 2050 (or as soon as possible thereafter based on common but differentiated capabilities), and in particular those countries trying to prevent/ slow progress of the global community towards this goal, that they are putting themselves at an economic disadvantage in the 21st century’s global green zero carbon economy. The focus should be to engage with all countries willing to embrace ambitious climate action and to identify the key support countries require to implement it. In many cases the problem is not a lack of ambition, but the fear of not being able to deliver any commitments for domestic and resource constraint reasons that keeps countries back from pledging and implementing ambitious climate action. Covid-19 exacerbates this situation further.

The FCO could

1. Issue an open invitation to all countries willing to engage within this ‘Net-Zero Coalition’ and approach countries who have demonstrated international climate action leadership in the past
2. Engage in one-on-one bilateral conversations to better understand these countries’ objectives
3. Invite relevant non-national actors into the conversation
4. Host virtual and in-person meetings of this coalition through the rest of 2020 and throughout 2021 while continuing to invite all UNFCCC parties to join the conversation to ensure the highest possible level of inclusiveness and transparency

How should the UK seek to ensure that outcomes are delivered after the summit?

The FCO needs to prioritise identifying the support countries require to accelerate their zero/low carbon transitions before, during and after the summit. Often, this comes in the form of for example

-          Capacity building and learning through knowledge/ experience with low carbon and adaptation policies from across governance levels and jurisdictions,

-          Access to zero/low carbon technologies and infrastructure,

-          Mobilising financial resources through global financial markets/ access to affordable financing and

-          Access to transnational networks of non-national actors capable of supporting countries in their low carbon transitions.

A key outcome of the COP26 summit should be increased ambitions to address climate change through updated Nationally Determined Commitments.

This means that the logic of the Paris Agreement of bottom-up climate action pledges could be extended into implementation by

1. Asking countries
1. For more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions;
2. For details on how they plan to achieve their targets through policies and other measures;
3. Which resources (policy, know how, financial, etc) they require to implement these policies and zero/low carbon transition plans;

2. Establish a ‘market place’-type online platform that brings together countries with national/ transnational non-state actors and other countries capable of and willing to provide support/ build capacities/ invest so that countries can achieve their Nationally Determined Contributions. This allows for transparency and accountability of climate action capacity building as well as fair access to global resources also for least developed and small developing countries;

3. Task an independent body such as the UNFCCC Secretariat to administer and monitor the platform;

4. Develop and agree on monitoring, reporting and verification mechanisms for this capacity building platform to ensure equitable and fair distribution of the support, along with a time plan for reviewing and improving the mechanism.

References:

Averchenkova, A. & Zenghelis, D. (2018) Pre-2020 Ambition on Climate Change: History, Status, Outlook. ECBI. European Capacity Building Initiative.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC. (2018). Global Warming of 1.5°C. Special Report. IPCC: Geneva.

Kurtzberg, T., Naquin, C. & Belkin, L. (2009). Humor as a relationship-building tool in online negotiations. International Journal of Conflict Management 20(4): 377-397.

Rietig K. (2014). Reinforcement of Multilevel Governance Dynamics: Creating Momentum for Increasing Ambitions in International Climate Negotiations. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 14(4): 371-389.

Rietig, K. (2019). Leveraging the Power of Learning for Effective Climate Governance. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 21(3): 228-241.

Rietig, K. (2020). Multilevel Reinforcing Dynamics between Global Climate Governance and European Renewable Energy Policy. Public Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12674.

Templeton, J. & Kohler, P. (2014). Implementation and Compliance under the

Minamata Convention on Mercury. RECIEL: Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 23(2): 211-220.

Smeets, S. (2015). Negotiations in the EU Council of Ministers: And All Must Have Prizes. Colchester: ECPR Press.

September 2020